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Ramaphosa says SA will take break from G20 after Trump snub

Patrick Bond & Lester Kiewit (Cape Talk) 5 December 2025

Lester Kiewit speaks to Prof Patrick Bond, Director of the Centre for Social Change in the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Humanities at University of Johannesburg, about what to make of South Africa deciding to “sit out” the next G20 in the U.S after they were not invited by President Donald Trump. Lester Kiewit speaks to Prof Patrick Bond, Director of the Centre for Social Change in the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Humanities at University of Johannesburg, about what to make of South Africa deciding to “sit out” the next G20 in the U.S after they were not invited by President Donald Trump. Good Morning Cape Town with Lester Kiewit is a podcast of the CapeTalk breakfast show. This programme is your authentic Cape Town wake-up call. Good Morning Cape Town with Lester Kiewit is informative, enlightening and accessible. The team’s ability to spot & share relevant and unusual stories make the programme inclusive and thought-provoking. Don’t miss the popular World View feature at 7:45am daily.

Lester Kiewitt: Reports over the last 24 hours is that the United States has now excluded South Africa from the first G20 sherpers meeting under the new Donald Trump G20 presidency. It’s a sharp break from what is protocol, what has been the norm over the last few years since 1997 since 1999 when it was first called the G7 then expanded to the G20 in which operates on consensus and as a member of the G20. South Africa is in fact a founding member. Donald Trump and Marco Rubio, his Secretary of State, again repeating the falsehoods of human rights abuses against Afrikaners. But now the Department of International Relations says that only by consensus can South Africa be removed from the Group of 20. Patrick Bond joins me now. He’s joins me now and he’s the director for the Centre for Social Change at the Faculty of Humanities in the University of Johannesburg. Is South Africa taking a break, or is this a diplomatic way of masking an exclusion? There was a a joke earlier this week from the presidency saying no, South Africa is just taking a break from the 2026 G20 meeting to be held in Miami. Patrick.

Patrick Bond: Thanks for having me, Lester, warm greetings to you and your listeners. I think the point that Vincent Magwenya, the presidential spokesperson, made is that this is a commercial break, and regular programming will resume, as he put it. The hope he has, is that a year from now, Donald Trump – after the December 15-16 2026 G20 hosting in Miami at his own personal golf club – then will give to Kier Starmer the chair, and Kier Starmer’s very favourable, had a great time here last month, and was very interested in having South Africa as part and parcel of a broader G20 agenda. And that typically has included some of the points, Lester, from the very beginning, that South Africa had a crucial role. In 1999, the very first meeting in Berlin – a meeting about the big financial crisis that the middle-income countries were undergoing, and the finance ministers met. 2008 came around and there was a big global financial crisis, emanating actually from the United States, and again now heads of state were coming to a G20 meeting, called by George W. Bush particularly to get the reserves, the foreign reserves of big exporters like China and Saudi Arabia and Korea. And therefore the heads of state came.

Now that was an important bailout. Trevor Manuel played a crucial role in 2009, in giving the International Monetary Fund about a trillion dollars of extra spending power. They lowered the interest rates. They printed money: quantitative easing. That was crucial in the period 2009 to 12, when the G20 acted in concert and again in 2020 during COVID. Similarly, the big rich countries and the middle powers worked together to have fiscal deficits - spending a bit more - because of a COVID crisis. And lower interest rates and more money printing. Now, Donald Trump seems to think, with his main adviser on this question, Scott Bessent, the finance minister, that South Africa isn’t really going to be needed and that about a year from now, the world economy won’t really require that sort of G20, including South Africa. And for his own political base, he likes to play the race card, doesn’t he? And so the race card, of course: the alleged Afrikaner farmer genocide. The only real pain I see Afrikaner farmers having, are in those vineyards in the Western Cape with the grapes and the wine: those aren’t going to the US duty-free, as they used to during the AGOA Africa Growth and Opportunity Act era, now it’s 30%. So I think Donald Trump’s causing more pain to Afrikaner farmers and their farm workers.

Lester: But Patrick, but can the United States unilaterally exclude South Africa from the planning around the G20? The G20 isn’t just one particular meeting at the end of the year when world leaders meet. They in fact start meeting from the December of the preceding year like we’ve seen this week. Can the US unilaterally say you’re not part of the G20, or could they couch it and say, ‘well we’re not kicking them now out, we’re just not inviting them to our party’?

Patrick: And indeed, not giving visas. That’s the crucial power that the US has, that they showed when they wouldn’t let Muhammad Abbas – the Palestinian Authority leader – come in September, to the United Nations, when there was a big debate about Israel’s genocide. Now those are the powers of a host country for multilateral institutions: the IMF, the World Bank and especially the UN. And as a result, Lester, sometimes countries have got together. In 1988, Ronald Reagan wouldn’t let Yasser Arafat come to a UN general assembly meeting, so the UN general assembly said, well voetsek to the US, we’re going to Geneva, we’re going to set up a meeting there. And that’s happened also in 1974.So there are precedents, and it all depends on the political will of the other countries. And that’s what was disappointing to hear from both Magwenya – the presidential spokesperson – and, in the quite moderate way in which Ronald Lamola wrote his letter, in a very defensive way, to Marco Rubio, his counterpart. And the essence is, ‘Hey, we do belong. We do belong.’ What we really should be arguing, I think, is that the US does not belong, does not have the standing to host a G20 that is aimed at multilateral strengthening, because of Donald Trump’s imminent invasion of Venezuela, his blowing up 21 boats and killing 80 people plus, and numerous ways in which we saw Trump walking out of the climate summit, the World Health Organisation, wrecking world trade, engaging in, again, more genocidal support for Israel, and many other geopolitical violations of what a good host should be doing. I think we should twist the plot a bit.

Lester: Patrick, I was at Nasrec at the G20 summit in Johannesburg in the media center where there was a feed that was broadcast for the entirety whether it be the opening red carpet ceremony and lots of hugs to a very cordial atmosphere during the talks and then of course the big congratulations to Cyril Ramaphosa, and hugs all around from Lula da Silva and Narendra Modi, even Prime Minister Meloni of Italy. You’d expect that the heads of state of other countries would say, ‘Well, this cannot be right.’ We know that the German chancellor Friedrich Mertz, he’s said that he would want to visit Washington and try and convince Donald Trump to invite South Africa. Surely you’d expect after the much fanfare and congratulations of the South African summit, you’d have world leaders picking up a phone to Donald Trump.

Patrick: And I would even add to Mertz – who’s obviously very important in the West, along with Japan, a very important western economy, and therefore you know somebody that Trump doesn’t want to necessarily alienate – but of course, Narendra Modi hosts the BRICS next year and that is another crucial question. Because Modi has been angry with his old friend Donald Trump because of a 50% tariff that Trump imposed in August, because of Modi’s import of cheap Russian oil and gas. And that tension remains, and there may be some trade deal at some point. But if Modi could step forward – he’s the most conservative, the most pro-West, pro-US of the BRICS leaders – so I wouldn’t put too much there. I mean it’s a very tricky thing when you’ve got a series of imperialist and let me say subimperialist economies, and right now ‘appeasement’ has been the watch word. In fact, that’s the word that former ambassador from South Africa to the US Ebrahim Rasool used the other day. He said,

“We’ve tried appeasement. It didn’t work.” And he was referring to, for example, stripping the G20 declaration of some stronger language. And they did that for the US, to try to attract them back. But I think, Lester, the crucial thing is that tradition didn’t even start only in South Africa. Don’t forget it was Modi who invited the African Union in. We haven’t heard yet if African Union delegates are going to get the invitation, the sherpa invitation this month, and invitations next year. But it’s the agenda starting with Indonesia 2022, Delhi 23, Rio 24 and Johannesburg in 25. That agenda of adding more of the questions that middle-income countries want, such as tax on the global rich, something stronger on climate, food security, the question of climate financing especially that Ramaphosa put at the top of the agenda, and African debt relief. Of course, Trump and Marco Rubio and Scott Bessant, they want nothing to do with that broader content agenda they would rather South Africa not be in the house to remind of the unfinished business.

Lester: Professor Patrick Bond, really appreciate your time. Director for the Center for Social Change, political economist.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vhewtE2j-0&list=PL7abMsEpkwTCQv8Sb8SpZ_--BTQlRloiC

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